


Keep The Light On

by raendown



Series: NaNoWriMo 2020 Drabbles [105]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 21:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21482896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: He only asks one thing of her when they say goodbye.
Relationships: Hyuuga Neji/Tenten
Series: NaNoWriMo 2020 Drabbles [105]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533161
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	Keep The Light On

They said goodbye slowly, hands lingering and eyes tracing the shapes of each other’s bodies as though it might be the last time. Neji knelt at her feet and pressed his lips against her belly where it would soon swell with his child. When he looked back up at her TenTen could feel the breath hitch in her throat for all the love she could see in his eyes.

“You’ll be careful while I’m gone,” he told her. “Remember, you’re carrying precious cargo now.”

“Wasn’t I already precious on my own?” she teased. He wasn’t fooled for an instant, though he did brush the loose hair from her face with gentle touches anyway.

“Of course. You are so, so precious to me. Keep the light on until I come home.” Neji kissed each of her knuckles in turn until she pulled her hands away with a roll of her eyes.

Repeating the words he had said to her many times before, she murmured, “So you can find your way. Of course.”

He left with all the reluctance of a man who’d just discovered he was to be a father, who wished he could stay and witness every moment as her belly swelled with the child they’d been waiting for. Several years of waiting and trying and visiting the healers. Now they finally had the addition they’d always wanted to make their family perfect. One little pair of tiny feet was just enough for them.

TenTen sent her husband off with a smile and a hand on her stomach and she looked away too soon, entirely unaware that this would be the last time she saw him. If she’d known she would have stared for hours, taken in every minute detail, memorized the parts of him she would have now only in photographs. But she didn’t know and TenTen turned away to go back in to the house before Neji was even out of sight. When she closed the door she couldn’t know how empty this home would come to feel in the days ahead.

It took several weeks for the letter to come, weeks of waiting and hoping, lying away at night with her hands clasped together. Every shinobi was raised with the knowledge that they could fall in any mission and TenTen had been prepared for that many years ago, made her peace with the idea of her own death. She hadn’t prepared for this. Nothing could have possibly prepared her for the moment she found Naruto standing on her front stoop with a carefully folded letter and pain in his eyes.

When she screamed the very force of it folded her knees and she barely registered Naruto’s arms catching her as she fell. TenTen clutched at her middle and bowed her head to scream again because the world wasn’t fair, this should never have happened. Her child was meant to have a father. After trying so hard for so long Neji deserved to watch the baby he always wanted grow up free of the seal that had caged him his entire childhood. He deserved to live a long and happy life. Now all he would have was a cold grave in the wilderness, unmarked and unfound, and a place in the afterlife where he would wait alone until the day she could follow after him.

They said goodbye slowly on the day she saw him last. But for TenTen that farewell lasted for the rest of her life, a goodbye in her heart every moment of every day, memories that she would not and could not forget. She would see him again.

But not yet. Not until she had raised their son with all the love she knew Neji would have given and reminded him every day that he’d once had a father, a very good man, who died so that others wouldn’t have to.

She would keep the light on until then.


End file.
